This invasion typified the whole blind, arrogant mentality. No one had checked the information the scouts had provided. Instead, they just assumed they’d be able to overcome any resistance with their mentalist powers and by chipping any natives they didn’t kill. Only, there was no zivvy, and the plague had disrupted everything so much the whole invasion was struggling. Toshiro was still confident they would prevail in the end, at least locally, but they could probably forget about the rest of the planet until the supply of zivvy resumed. He presumed their leaders would resort to some sort of biological attack on the other lands to reduce their threat.

“Well, until he turns up, I’ll keep commanding my troops. We will attack their line tomorrow morning just before dawn. We can’t let them have too long to strengthen it.”

Uesugi nodded. “No. It’s a pity we don’t have real military troops in our commands. If we did, we could attack this afternoon and into the evening. As it is, we’ll have to spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the night reorganizing our men, I imagine.”

Toshiro nodded. “I’ll have to do the same so this Kato Rokuro doesn’t complain when he turns up to take command.”

Uesugi grinned at his friend, gave him a short bow, and headed off to his command center. Toshiro returned the bow, and after a moment spent contemplating the way things were going, he set about organizing his men or, more accurately, reorganizing his men. About seven, a truck rolled up to his headquarters. There were half a dozen armored cyborgs and six conscripted civilians in the back, sent as reinforcements, and his new battalion commander.

Toshiro had come out of the house that he was using as a headquarters and stood on the front step watching the truck being unloaded. Besides the troops, there were half a dozen boxes of ammunition and even some food, by the look of it, Rokuro was in the passenger seat. He came around to where Toshiro was standing and looked him up and down, which was pretty insolent, but Toshiro was too tired to make n issue of it. Kato Rokuro looked about fifty, give or take, and didn’t appear very military.

“Toshiro Ozawa?”

“Kato Rokuro?”

“Sir.” The man replied and finally saluted, which Toshiro returned.

“You have been informed you will be taking over command of the troops I have been operating, which are now being designated the first Battalion of the sixth Brigade?”

“Yes. You will find that they are a mix of cyborgs and former civilians as with most of the forces that make up most of our army.”

“I understand.” The man said with a resigned nod.

“Yes. Just so. We still have two tanks and a couple of AGCs in the first battalion, and there are three tanks in the second. Vehicles aren’t a problem as we’ve been commandeering local vehicles. Most of them use gasoline, of which there is a good supply at present. The few electric vehicles they have aren’t dependent on broadcast power like ours. We’ve captured several intact fuel stations, so gasoline is still plentiful on our front, but unless we can capture a refinery soon or keep overrunning the native’s fuel stations, the use of local vehicles will decline.”

Although his troops were in a position to begin the assault on the built-up area, Toshiro hadn’t actually intended to attack today, planning to give his men an extra night’s rest before commencing the battle for the suburb. With the arrival of Uesugi and his extra troops, he decided not to wait and signal his men to begin their assault immediately.

They made some rapid progress for the first hour or so, and then the attack started to grind to a halt, but by that stage, Uesugi had gotten most of his men into position, and using his three tanks as spearheads, they struck into the built-up area from what was the flank to the front line to Toshiro’s men had created. His troops had taken roughly half the area by nightfall and kept up the pressure throughout the night. About an hour before dawn, the enemy broke contact and retired rapidly, leaving the now empty and largely destroyed built-up area for the Japanese to occupy.

In the morning, reconnaissance showed that they had fallen back to a new defense line that stretched from the lake almost to the coast along a road that was lined with trees along much of its length. They were apparently digging trenches and generally making it clear that the Japanese would find it expensive trying to thrust through their new line as the Japanese would have to attack over open ground, by and large. Toshiro studied the enemy positions and determined the best lines of attack. He concentrated his own force to the north of what used to be a railway line while Uesugi’s forces were massed to the south of that point.

After the confusion of the night fighting, they spent the following day reorganizing and transferring some troops from one command to the other to balance up the two forces. He didn’t want to give the natives time to dig in more effectively, but he had no choice as the whole force was disorganized and worn out. Late in the day, a runner turned up informing him that he had been promoted to brigade commander with Uesugi’s men being designated the Second Battalion while his own men, which were to be placed under a mentalist named Kato Rokuro and his troops would now be designated the First Battalion of Sixth Brigade. After the messenger had left, Toshiro turned to Uesugi.

“Do you know this Kato Rokuro?”

“No, but he’s clearly from the well-known Rokuro family. I know old Lord Shigaru Rokuro, who I think is the head of the local family now, or at least he was before all the troubles started. He’s Rokuro 3, the last I heard. Sorry, I don’t know exactly what this Kato Rokuro’s relationship with the family’s main branch is. Like all families, they must have lost people in the disaster in Europe.”

The Rokuro’s formed a large family, and the main branch had once been very important. The only ones that Torshiro knew were not members of the main family, but even so, they were all typical upper-class lords who did little but acted like they were important anyway because of the family they were born into. Arrogant to a fault. Mind you, that was a fault that ran across all three branches of the Alliance and was probably the main reason they were in the mess they were in here.

Yes, Princess Gizel is back!

When a derelict spaceship is spotted in an out of the way system it raises several different questions.

Is it a human ship or have the finally found aliens?

And who shot it up?

The Emperor of Kimeria decides to keep it quiet while they learn more and he has just the person to send…..

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Note: This is the longest book I have written so far – 166k words

“You have troops?”

He waved back down the road where Toshiro could indeed see columns of figures marching along each side of the dual carriageway and what looked to be three tanks plus some trucks, all heading in this direction.

“Right, well, we have this large urban area here to take next, which I anticipate is going to be nasty. The first day of the invasion was easy as there was no real organized resistance, but since then, we’ve been slugging it out to gain even a few kilometers each day as the resistance has been hardening up. They’ve got mortars, machine guns, and real soldiers facing us now. There are no tanks or heavy artillery on this front yet, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time until they get stuff down here from up further north.”

“Yes, fill me in. The original survey said this was the capital of only a small civilized area that was in the immediate vicinity of this city on a world that had been hit with a nuclear war some centuries ago. Was it wrong?”

“Yes and no. Nuclear war, yes. Only a small civilized area, not really. This was the capital of the Commonwealth of Ostraya, as they call Australia here, but their country stretches right up the east coast to the far north and westward to the edge of the desert at least. They have real weapons and a real military due to past problems with their northern neighbors, although it is taking them a while to get their regulars down south to oppose us.”

“I see,” Uesugi commented.

Before Toshiro could say anything further, there was a sudden roar as a jet aircraft appeared from the west, flying extremely low, which accounted for why they hadn’t heard up to now. It came roaring over the urban area they had to assault next and began dropping munitions on the troops on the road. In a couple of seconds, the plane had disappeared into the distance, disappearing as if it had never existed apart from the figures that were now lying in the roadway and one of the trucks which was burning furiously.

“Damn, that’s new.” Toshiro heard himself saying.

“I wasn’t briefed on them having jet aircraft,” Uesugi said dourly.

“Neither was I. That’s the first one I’ve seen. I hope they don’t have too many.”

“You and me both.” The older man added as he looked back down the road trying to determine how many casualties his force had just taken. It was too far away, and his men too spread out to tell easily, so he gave up his survey and turned back to Toshiro.

“I suppose I had better get my troops added to your men so we can assault this urban area together, then.”

Toshiro nodded. He quickly counted the surviving troops Uesugi had brought with him.

“Seeing your forces are here on the road. You can assault from this corner. I’ll get my troops to assault along the northern front of the built-up area to distract them while you get your men into position. Then you hit them in the flank, and hopefully, we’ll roll them up quickly.”

Chapter 7

New men

There had been some heavy drizzle earlier in the day, and there were still puddles in the lower spots in the immediate area as an exhausted Toshiro Ozawa perched on the bus stop seat on the side of the divided road at the top of the ridge that had taken his men all day to take. Their advance along the coastal areas had gone fairly easily, but trying to advance along the two main roads had gone slowly as the local’s defense had solidified. The defenders were still short of heavy weapons, and they were increasingly using civilian volunteers to slow the advance of the Tomkyan forces.

He had decided that this would do for today. Tomorrow he would re-organize, see what new troops had been assigned to him, if any, and then start the assault on the town. He heard a whistling sound, dropped to the ground, and rolled under the seat just as half a dozen mortar shells landed, straddling the dual carriageway road. A couple of pieces of shrapnel hit the plastic bus shelter, but he remained unharmed. The salvo wasn’t repeated. The mortar unit was probably re-locating before counter-battery fire could target them.

He picked himself up off the ground and looked around. Maybe a casualty or two, but nobody seemed to have died this time. He heard a shout and looked around. Uesugi Kenshin was creeping along the side of the fence of the second house back from where Toshiro was sheltering. Toshiro moved to meet him, then halted and looked sharply at the older man. Uesugi held out his hand and showed power, and Toshiro relaxed.

“I thought you were in Europe? I was worried that you would have caught the plague.” He said as he and his old mentor clasped forearms.

The older man smiled and shook his head.

“Actually, I was in Nippon visiting family when the attack started. There were huge amounts of panic, of course. People were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It was truly amazing. I’m talking about senior officials here, sensible dour, career bureaucrats, and such like, you understand. And the plague wasn’t even in Nippon. No wonder Europe collapsed.”

“Have you heard what is going on there? I’ve been a bit out of touch here.”

“Civil war. Besides the plague that removes a mentalist’s power, there’s something else that dissolves the zivvy. Cyborgs started running amok all over the place, and then they got clever and began spreading the substance that dissolves the zivvy wires. I don’t know whether it was the cyborgs or the abolitionists, but I doubt we control anywhere in central Europe anymore. When I flew out of Nippon for the portal complex in North America, there were reports of cyborgs revolting and civilian servants supporting them in Nippon as well.”

“Shit!”

“Yes. That about sums it up. The revolts looked so strong and widespread that I told the authorities in Nippon that they’d be better off shipping everybody they could over to North America and through the portal to here rather than trying to defend Nippon, but whether anybody’s listening, I don’t know. So tell me where you’re up to on this front. The General was a bit vague when he sent me down this way with my troops.”